Most new mobile phones in 2009
will have QWERTY keyboards – either physical, or virtual. Numeric
only keypads will be relegated to extremely low end phones, or those
marketed to the elderly.

UNIX-based OS's will become the
predominate mobile phone platform. With the popularity of the
iPhone, this may already be happening, but it will be come more
clear in 2009.

While I won't go so far as to
speculate on a specific new iPhone or tablet from Apple, or even if
there will be one, I will say that their participation and
significance in the mobile market will continue.

Android will be seen on many
mobile devices by the end of 2009. This will work for and against
Android as not all products will necessarily be of the best quality.

Linux will grow in the
“lesser-tier” Chinese phone category. Instead of running
unlicensed copies of Windows Mobile, or claiming to run Windows
Mobile, while really running something else, some such phones will
claim to run Android. Some will be running a true Android OS while
others will be running parts of it, or other Linux-based OS's that
claim to be Android. Such phones will also be seen more in the rest
of the world as the concept of unlocked phones becomes more known to
the mainstream.

By the end of 2009, Nokia will be
under pressure to drop Maemo for Android.

Windows Mobile will die in 2009.
Pushed out by Apple, Android, and Blackberry, as well as to a much
lesser extent by Palm and Maemo, Windows Mobile devices will become
too small of a market for Microsoft to remain involved in serious
development. They will try, they will push, they will not go down
without screaming. They may rename Windows XP as new version of
Windows Mobile, but it will be intended for x86 family MID's,
NetBooks, and possibly even x86 based mobile phones. By the end of
2009, the Windows CE derived OS will be dying out.

Blackberry will also suffer.
While continuing to be a factor in government and business, the
Blackberry OS will simply not have the power to deliver rich
internet, gaming, and other features that consumers will be
demanding on high-end phones. They will remain significant in
messaging phones, which will now be the mid-range. Blackberry may
also exist as an application that runs on other platforms.

MID's UMPC's and NetBooks

This technology will make gains in
2009, but the market (the consumer) will see just the opposite.
Squeezed out between capable mobile phones, and $399 Laptops, I am
sad to say that there is simply no market for devices such as this
Wibrain I am using now.

The gains will be made in the
background – iPhone-like user interfaces, mobile graphics
technology, battery technology, and Mobile-friendly x86 chipsets
will all enable future tablets and other handheld devices, but,
unless Apple (or somebody) can do another iPhone-like leapfrog, we
will never see it in 2009.

Instead of Netbooks, we will
continue to see devices in the 10” range with a choice of OS. The
low end units will run Linux. The same device, with some version of
Windows, perhaps the re-named Windows XP mentioned above, will
offer more RAM, higher clockspeed and other enhancements over the base
system running Linux. The Windows versions will cost $100 to $200
more than the Linux units. As the year progresses, the Linux
versions will become available with the same features so that it will
end up simply being an OS choice.

Linux

2009 will NOT be the year of Linux
on the desktop, infact, no year will be the year of Linux on the
desktop. Microsoft is inexorably linked to the glorified
typewriters we call desktop PC's. Where one goes the other will
follow. For the consumer, the desktop PC faces a similar fate to
the UMPC and MID. It will eventually be squeezed out of the middle
of a triangle formed by connected home media devices, laptops, and
more capable mobile devices. We will see this continue in 2009 as
more PC's have TV tuners, and more TV's become monitors for
something with internet access.

The demise of the desktop is a
longer term phenomenon. For 2009, Linux's big gains will, as
mentioned above, be in the mobile world. The troves of unknowing Linux users will continue to
grow exponentially in 2009.

Devices like the T-Mobile G1, and
the Linux-based Asus EeePC's are showing people that Linux can be
user-friendly. More importantly, Asus' success with the EeePC made
the other manufactures realize that you can make real money selling
PC's running Linux. Acer, Dell, HP and others have jumped on the
bandwagon. Expect to see Linux as an option on more, and more
varied systems.

The Linux offered will
overwhelmingly be Ubuntu. I am not exactly sure why, but Ubuntu
seems to have the best name recognition, as well as community
perception. RedHat will continue to dominate commercial
distributions, training, and commercial support. They will also
continue their huge development effort, but it will be Ubuntu that
the user sees on their desktop.

2009 will NOT be the year that PC
hardware manufactures realize that they should provide an OS they
tailor for the products they sell. Mobile phone manufactures largely
do this, as do game console manufactures and manufactures of
pretty much everything else with a processor in it. The PC
manufactures haven't wised up to this in the last few years, and I
have no reason to believe that they will in 2009. The above
mentioned option of a lightly customized version of Ubuntu on some
models will be the only step in this direction we see in 2009.

Microsoft

Microsoft's market share will continue to fall at the same time (but not necessarily at the same rate) as
mobile internet use increases. This will become more obvious in
2009 due to the reasons above. As content creators realize they must
make content work on a variety of devices, Microsoft looses even more of its market grasp.

Microsoft's products will actually
improve significantly, at least from a security point of view, but
interestingly, this will actually hurt Microsoft. First, Security
will improve simply because there can only be a finite number of
exploitable bugs in Internet Explorer (the number one attack vector
for years now). I really believe that at some point, Microsoft has
got to fix most of them. There has also been at least some
marginal improvement with respect to security in Windows Vista. So
why will this hurt the perception of Microsoft? There are 2 rules
of perception: 1. Perception always lags the actual events, and 2.
Perception is always wrong. People will think of Vista and IE
problems from the past well into 2009 regardless of what occurs (or
doesn't occur) in 2009. Also, there is a huge perception that
Microsoft products get so many viruses because they are so popular.
While only partially correct, people hold on to this like a
religious belief. If we follow the implication of the opposite, then
if the products have fewer security issues, it must mean that they
are declining in popularity.

Microsoft's stock will continue to
decline in 2009. The huge stock buy back plan Microsoft has had in
place for 2008 has only slowed the decline. Many have suggested
that Microsoft actually take on debt to continue the buy-back. The
current financial situation makes this a less likely option. As
Microsoft's stock drops though the teens, perception will cause a
vicious circle.